Complete Songs For Voice And Piano (2010)

Elgar

Amanda Roocroft, Konrad Jarnot, Reinild Mees

As we noted in the first volume of this survey of Elgar’s songs, like most composers his first attempts at composition were with anthems and small chamber and piano pieces, though unlike many young composers of his day, strangely Elgar wrote few songs until his various love affairs from his mid-twenties on•wards. Elgar’s early life as a composer was one of constantly hawking salon music and popular short pieces round publishers – a situation that gradually changed in the 1890s as his early works for chorus and orchestra were heard. But it took Elgar a long time to become established, the Enigma Variations only appearing when he was 41. The earliest song presented here, indeed Elgar’s earliest surviving completed work, a setting of the American James Gates Percival’s The Language of Flowers dates from May 1872 when he was not quite 15. He dedicated it to his sister Lucy on her twentieth birthday. It remained unpublished and unknown until recently when it was printed in the Elgar Collected Edition. In the 1880s, in his late-twenties, Elgar tried to establish himself as a composer with various short pieces, salon music and songs which as we have seen he took round the many London publishers of the day. A Soldier’s Song, styled as ‘Op 5’ dates from 1884 and although it was sung at the Worcester Glee Club in March that year it had to wait for publication until 1890 when it appeared in The Magazine of Music – and 1903, when renamed A War Song, Boosey took it on, doubtless with the public’s preoccupation with the Boer War in mind. Another American, Colonel John Hay provided the words for Through the Long Days, which dated ‘Gigglewycke (his friend Charles William Buck’s Yorkshire home) on 10 Aug 1885 was sung in London at a St James’s Hall ballad concert in February 1887 and, being short and tuneful was published almost immediately by Stanley Lucas, Weber & Co. Elgar generally set lesser-known or minor verse doubtless feeling that great poetry should stand on its own and not constrain him in his response. In this case the words were of immediate emotional resonance for Elgar, since, written in August 1885, they herald his lost fiancé Helen Weaver’s planned departure for New Zealand two months later. Is She Not Passing Fair? to words by Charles, Duc d’Orléans translated by Louisa Stuart Costello is dated 28 Oct 1886 and although not published until 1908 is perhaps the bestknown of our group thus far. Elgar had just met his future wife Alice Roberts and we must wonder if he was celebrating it in music. The ballad As I Laye a-thynkynge is another early publishing success, dated 12 June 1887 and issued by John Beare & Son the following year. As a Victorian, Elgar shared the period’s love of the pseudo medieval which saw so much of academe and religion decked out in the trappings of a reinvented past. Here he sets ‘Thomas Ingoldsby’ (real name R.H.Barham) complete with olde-worlde spellings.....

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Amanda Roocroft

Amanda Roocroft has secured an international reputation as one of Britain's most exciting singers in opera, concert and recital. She graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music and studies with Barbara Robotham. In concert she has appeared with leading orchestras and conductors throughout Europe and North America. She has sung and recorded, with sir John Eliot Gardiner, the part of Fiordiligi in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte on compact disc and video and has also recorded Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony with Bernard Haitink. She has appeared at the BBC Proms, including the 2001 season and the Edinburgh International Festival and she regularly sings at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and at the Glyndebourne Festival. Recently she has toured Japan with the Bayerische Staatsoper and Zubin Mehta and Europe with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester.

Today Reinild Mees is a much sought-after accompanist for song recitals and duo concerts. She performs regularly in radio and television broadcasts. For Channel Classics Records she has recorded a number of interesting CD’s: The Complete Songs of Sir Edward Elgar, Ottorino Respighi, Franz Schreker and Karol Szymanowski. Currently she is recording all songcycles of Robert Schumann with the German baritone Jochen Kupfer, playing a historical grand piano from Schumann’s time. All of her CD’s have received extremely good reviews in Gramophone, Fono Forum, Musica, Luister and other magazines. In 2004 Reinild Mees won the Szymanowski - Award and the Medal 'Merit of Polish Culture' for her achievements in promoting the song repertoire of Karol Szymanowski. Recently the Szymanowski CD's won the FRYDERYK AWARD, the most prestigious music award in Poland for the best recording of Polish music in 2004.

As a vocal coach Reinild Mees has taught at the Amsterdam and Utrecht Conservatory, the European Centre for Opera and Vocal Art (Ghent) and the Opera Studio Nederland. In addition to accompanying masterclasses for Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Irmgard Seefried, Galina Vishnevskaja and other famous singers she played as an official accompanist for a number of international competitions.

In order to promote the revival of the beautiful songs, mainly from the interbellum, which have been neglected after the Second World War, Reinild Mees founded the 20th Century Song Foundation. This foundation aims to bring back the musical treasure to the public by producing (semi-staged) song recitals with special themes: Spotlights concerts.

Gramophone

A welcome second helping of Elgar songs from these sympathetic artists.
(…) Konrad Jarnot leaves a most favourable impression, his timbre fresh and diction impeccable, the ‘War Song’ and Arabian Serenade’ push him to the very limits of his natural range. Amanda Roocroft sings with infectious ardour even so, making out an especially strong case for the two passionate Op. 60 settings from 2010 of texts by Elgar’s own pseudonym (Pietro d’Alba). Reinild Mees’s accompaniments are past prase in their discerning refinement and shapeliness. Here’s a disc that many devoted Elgarian will want to try.

Fanfare

Elgar's songs intermittently offer their share of faded Victorian/Edwardian pleasures (…) And, as on that first volume, those pleasure emerge with the utmost tact in the hands of these exceptional musicians, who manage to capture the songs' naïve innocence an sweet flights of fancy (…)
(…) The rare moments of drama are delivered with ardor that's never overwrought (…)
(…) both singers have immensely attractive voices, and both invest their phrasing with imaginative but unexaggerated color. (…)